Conceptualising the Relationship Between Formal and Informal Social Protection

Abstract

To date, practical and scholarly work on the interaction between formal and informal social protection has focused on crowding in and crowding out of informal social protection by formal social protection. However, little is known about the relationship between both forms of social protection in conditions where one form of social protection is more effective than the other, or both forms of social protection are effective and ineffective. This article empirically examines how both forms of social protection interact and conceptualises this relation under these conditions by drawing on ninety semi-structured interviews with households across fourteen cities in Pakistan. The study theorises the interaction of formal and informal social protection in five different ways. Based on this, the article argues for further research to explore the relationship between formal and informal social protection in different contexts for building scholarship and policy interventions to improve the lives of the vulnerable.

Overcoming hybridisation in global welfare regime classifications: lessons from a single case study

“…Therefore, it is imperative to consider the role of informal and non-statutory provisionswhich hitherto remained the focus of development studiesin analysing welfare regimes (Roumpakis & Sumarto, 2020). Furthermore, the role of informal and non-statutory provisions needs to be analysed not in isolation but in conjunction with statutory welfare measures (Sumarto, 2017(Sumarto, , 2020Roumpakis, 2020a;Mumtaz & Whiteford, 2021a;Mumtaz, 2023). This will enable a better understanding of the complexities of a given case, allow capturing the presence of various welfare regimes within a given contexthybridisationbridge the gap between social policy with development studies, and offer a mutually beneficial and a more robust approach for the analysis of the welfare regime leading to better social policy measures for the welfare of the poor and vulnerable (Midgley, 2019).…”